The past decade has witnessed great advancements in VoIP technology and usages. With the trend of digital transformation taking place in the business world, VoIP services become essential for virtually every business. 2020 will be another promising year for VoIP industry players to thrive, and there are many new resellers and service providers looking to capitalize on demand.
However, it can be overwhelming and hard to navigate the VoIP industry with a long list of vendors offering different features and growth opportunities. How do you determine the right vendor that best suit your needs as a reseller? How do you find the right channel partner program? What is important to know before making the final decision? This blog will address major concerns and give you some ideas on choosing a VoIP PBX vendor.
1. Future-proof Products
Besides crystal-clear call quality and highly reliable connections, you may also expect the vendor to stay up to date on the industry standards and the latest technology trends. Are they set up to provide unified communications capabilities? Can they support a mobile workforce and remote offices? Do they have a failover plan in case of an unplanned network outage？Do they innovate and introduce new features to their products regularly?
Yeastar’s answer: we constantly upgrade and fine-tune our PBX system to keep it future-proof. For example, keeping up with the UC trend, we developed the free Linkus Softphone which provides BYOD mobility, chat, presence, file sharing, CRM integration, etc., having different communications channels integrated into one single platform instead of engaging multiple providers for different services.
2. Adapting to Your Target Customers’ Needs
One reseller may work primarily with large enterprises while another may target small and medium-sized businesses. Your focus should solely be on providing on-demand solutions for your target customers. The right product is vital to embark on your VoIP business. Identify which features best align with your VoIP business goals and your target customers. Many resellers serve customers in certain verticals so whether the vendor provides industry solutions become critical to their success.
Yeastar’s answer: we offer a wealth of business VoIP solutions that help increase employee productivity, reduce overall communications costs, and improve your bottom line. We also have wide-ranging experience and proven expertise in serving hospitality, healthcare, education, retail, and more. View our VoIP solutions by industry verticals.
3. Ease of Installation and Management
Look for the vendor who takes both the end users and the service providers into account. You need not only the right solution to provide to your customers but also the right tools to assist in deploying and managing customer-premises devices. Particularly, most small businesses have few experienced IT staff to handle their business phone systems and count on their service providers for system management. Thus, ease of installation and management is among the top considerations when opting for a vendor.
Yeastar’s answer: Yeastar PBX System is easy to manage through the intuitive web GUI. For example, you can provision IP phones in bulk for your customers to save time and effort. When having several PBXs resided in different locations, the Remote Management tool helps you, monitor, manage, and modify the systems without traveling to the site.
4. Compatibility with Trunks and Endpoints
You are probably serving customers using trunks and endpoints from different brands, or you may want to bundle the PBX system with the trunks and endpoints you are also selling, so you must find out if they are compatible, furthermore, whether it is easy to configure them. A reliable vendor is able to seamlessly implement the VoIP PBX system with services or equipment from multiple vendors.
Yeastar’s answer: we strive to ensure interoperability with ITSP partners worldwide. To make configuration quick and easy, our PBX system includes pre-configured templates of a list of SIP trunk providers who have passed the compatibility test. Our PBX System can also integrate IP phones, hotel phones, SIP paging systems, door phones, and any SIP compliant endpoints and systems.
5. The Ability to Integrate with 3rd Party Applications
Integration is a buzz word in the VoIP industry, so another important aspect to consider is whether the VoIP PBX system is able to work with other services your customers are using or you are also selling. Have others integrated the PBX system with your applications before? Leading vendors usually offer easy out-of-the-box integration with popular enterprise tools such as CRM, CTI, etc., and allow you to make you can also make custom integration through APIs, just with a little bit of extra work.
Yeastar’s answer: we have comprehensive solutions to integrate CRM, PMS, and call center, including Zoho, Google Contacts, QueueMetrics, etc., and also support integration via APIs, enabling resellers to unlock more capabilities and potentials.
6. Technical Support, Training, and Self-learning
It is known that technical issues come up with even the top-notch products and solutions in the market. There is nothing worse for your customers to experience unexpected downtime and technical issues while you cannot have a timely resolution from your vendor. Therefore, make sure the vendor is proactive and has the expertise to deliver the best quality of technical support. Besides, the vendor should provide thorough training courses as you adding their offerings into your service portfolio.
Yeastar’s answer: you can reach our dedicated support team by submitting tickets online, sending emails, or calling, and a wealth of articles in the support portal will also help you. We also offer a variety of technical training and certification services for our partners to have a good command of the Yeastar PBX System, and our YouTube channel is another informational, interesting, and helpful learning hub.
7. Comprehensive Partner Program
An engaged, channel-focused vendor can truly make a difference. In contrast to a referral program, a channel partner program should involve resellers as a partner, allowing you to own the customer relationship and add value to your VoIP service in various ways. Look for vendors that don’t compete with you by selling directly.
Yeastar’s answer: 100% channel-focused, we sell only through the channel and keep the focus on the support and development of our channel partners. We provide quality marketing and sales support every step of the way, including marketing collateral, dedicated account manager, and one-on-one sales assistance, etc. Our pricing model eliminates hidden costs and simplifies complicated license fees, boosting partners’ return on investments.
Hear It from Our Partners
In working with Yeastar for several years now, we have found in them a great partner with great support and marketing ideas. Yeastar has a nice way of thinking outside the box, while still being understandable and practical. Yeastar is an easy and correct communicator and they deliver what they promise.
– Shirley Van Deudekom, Tiptel
Behind every successful company, there are great people. And in Yeastar I’ve found a lot of great people, in the company and in the whole worldwide network of partners and trainers that can help you every time you need it.”
– Ing. Giovanni Salvo, FIORE SRL
Before you jump into the lucrative VoIP marketplace, it is crucial to figure out what to look for in a vendor, research its partner programs, and ask the right questions.
